The Morgan Men
by Solo Ensemble
Summary: While in hiding, Jason Morgan sneaks back home for a day to reunite with his wife and son.


**Prompt – Tears and Rain.**

**Note **– Thanks to **Jasmine **for the prompt and for being a member here at Solo Ensemble.

**SEMMFF41: The Morgan Men**

"Momma?"

Jake peeked up over the edge of his mother's bed, staring directly at her nose as she slept, then reached out and poked it. "Momma?"

She was up instantly, her wide blue eyes searching the darkness until they landed on her little boy's face. "Jake? Jake, honey, what's wrong? What are you doing up?"

He let her pick him up and scoop him up onto the bed. "I heard a noise and thought there was a stranger in the house, so I went downstairs to protect you like Dad told me to."

Elizabeth closed her eyes and buried her nose in his dark blonde hair. "Oh, baby, don't do that. Dad didn't mean for you to do that. You can't go running every time you hear a noise, honey, okay? What if there really was someone downstairs?"

Jake grinned against her shoulder. "There is."

She froze. "What?"

He pulled back and looked up at her, his cerulean eyes glittering in the moonlight. "There is someone downstairs, Momma. He's sleeping on the couch. Come on, I'll show you."

Elizabeth let him tug her out of bed and grabbed the baseball bat she always kept by the door, trotting after her son as he led her down the hall, down the stairs, and into their living room.

"Shh," he whispered, motioning for her to put the bat down in the landing. "Look."

She followed his finger and saw a man sprawled out on her sofa. A pair of black motorcycle boots sat discarded on the floor by the coffee table, and she could see a few dark blonde locks falling over onto the armrest.

"Oh, my God," she got out as both she and Jake launched themselves off the last step and hurtled toward the couch. "Jason!"

"Dad!"

Jason let out a grunt when his son and his wife fell on top of him, but the crushing embrace was most welcome. The enforcer squirmed and turned over onto his stomach, catching his little boy against his chest and his wife against his side.

"Dad, you're home!"

"Shh," he murmured into his son's hair. "Not so loud, buddy. God, I missed you. Let me look at you."

Jake swept his blonde locks out of his face and grinned at his father, who grinned back and tickled his stomach until the boy collapsed in giggles. While Jake was still trying to catch his breath, Jason reached out, tucked his fingers under his wife's chin, and kissed her soundly.

"That's gross," Jake got out before his father's fingers once again found his tummy underneath his Chuggin' Charlie pajama top. "Dad! Stop!"

"Not so loud, baby, not so loud," Elizabeth laughed, trying to keep the tears out of her voice. "Shh."

"Who's gonna hear us?" Jake wanted to know. "It's okay, Dad's home!"

"I am, buddy, I am," Jason smiled, kissing his son's forehead again. After three months of being away, he couldn't get enough of his little boy. "I was hoping to get here last night but there was a delay."

He met Elizabeth's gaze and they shared a knowing look. "I had to wait for a little while, but I got here. It was late, so I thought I'd sleep down here for an hour or two and surprise you guys in the morning."

Jake threw his arms around his father's neck as Jason began to stand, and was lifted up in his strong arms. "You came for Momma's birthday?"

"Momma's birthday," Jason agreed, taking Elizabeth's hand. She smiled up at him and led them into the kitchen, careful not to flip on the lights. There was never any telling who was watching the house. "You hungry, buddy? You wanna help us make breakfast?"

Jake nodded, but remained in his father's arms even when Jason attempted to deposit him on the countertop. "I want eggs."

"Then we'll make eggs," Elizabeth beamed, discreetly wiping away her tears. This was no time to cry: her husband was home and her family was back intact. No matter what they were going through and how there didn't seem to be any end in sight, for this moment, it didn't matter. She had both her Morgan men with her, and that was all she needed.

"Where've you been all this time, Dad?" the four-year-old wanted to know. "Where did you go?"

"Uncle Sonny sent me to the island," Jason began while Elizabeth whisked the eggs together and added a little salt. "You remember the island, right? We went there last year and we taught you how to swim? Remember, Max ate shrimp and his face got all red."

Jake let out a little laugh. "He looked silly."

Elizabeth rolled her eyes playfully while warming up the skillet. "He was allergic, baby. He had to take medicine to make the red stuff go away."

"Did you come from the island?"

"No, buddy, I couldn't stay on our island. I went to a place called the Markham Islands. You know Mister Spencer, right? He has a house there and he told me stay there."

"Are you safe there?" Jake asked. "Is Mister Spencer helping you be safe?"

"Mister Spencer's helping me be safe," Jason affirmed. It still felt strange, being on the receiving end of Luke's generosity, but after he and Sonny had unmasked Logan Hayes as Lucky Spencer's killer and dealt with him, the older Spencer had renewed his vows of friendship. He had been among the first to offer Jason protection when the authorities began searching for Anthony Zacchara's killer.

"He's a friend of ours and he says he wanted me to stay safe so that I could come back and see you." Jason gently brushed his son's stubborn blonde hair out of his face and jiggled him in his arms. "You been doing okay?"

Jake made a face. "Yeah. The cops still come around, though. I made Michael teach me a bad word to say to them, but Momma won't let me."

Jason's lips thinned. "Michael shouldn't be teaching you anything bad. I'll talk to his dad about that."

"They always bother Momma," Jake yawned, resting his head against his father's while Elizabeth scooped the eggs onto a large plate and opened up a little container of shredded cheddar cheese. "They keep asking her questions about you and ask when you're coming home."

"You can't tell them you saw me, okay, Jake? You can't let them know I was here."

His boy rolled his eyes. "Duh."

Elizabeth laughed and crooked her finger at them. "Come on, guys, food's ready. Dad's favorite: huevos rancheros."

Jason grinned at that and, tossing his son over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. "Come on, bud."

Elizabeth had to wait for father and son to get settled on the couch – and getting settled always meant lots of rough-housing and then a little cool-down – before she sat down and handed Jason the heaping plate and fork. With Jake balanced on his thigh, Jason proceeded to cut up the mess of salsa, cheese, sour cream, and eggs and picked up a small forkful.

Jake's open mouth reminded him of baby birds in a nest, and Jason fed him carefully, smirking when a small gob of sour cream remained behind on his lower lip. He almost dropped the next forkful on the way to Elizabeth's mouth, and his wife laughed and took the plate from him. She then proceeded to feed both Morgan men on their flowered couch that Jason hated so much as the birds began to slowly chirp to life outside long before the sun's first rays hit the horizon.

They stayed together all day. They just couldn't get enough of each other after Jason's three month exile. The search for Anthony Zacchara's killer was still on, and Ric and Scott Baldwin didn't plan to stop until they had Jason locked up behind bars. Sonny and Luke called in as many favors downtown as they could, and they all hoped that the pressure from the state's office would eventually force Scott to withdraw and close the case. And then Jason could stop hiding and come back home to his family.

Watching her boys tussle and play all day was bittersweet for Elizabeth. Jason had missed so much in the three months he'd been gone, and it felt so good to just be able to sit back and watch him with Jake. If ever there was a man completely wrapped up in his son, it was the stoic and unfeeling Jason Morgan.

He ate cereal on the couch with Jay as they watched Blue's Clues and A Pup Named Scooby Doo and learned from Mister Rogers how newspapers were printed. Jason gave Jake a bath and actually let him pick out his own outfit, which explained why her son came bounding down the stairs in a pair of polka-dotted pajama bottoms and a plaid shirt and a backwards baseball cap. They made sandwiches together for lunch and pulled out a DVD of the Lion King, Jake's favorite movie, to watch together on the couch. Jason started a fire in their fireplace and taught Jake how to safely roast marshmallows, which they then used to make s'mores.

Jason also inspected Jake's Chuggin' Charlie toy and managed to realign the wheel on the spindle, and Elizabeth watched the light in his eyes dim when Jake begged him to try it out with him in the driveway. That was when she had to step in and explain again to her little boy how Dad couldn't go outside because someone might see him and tell Mister Baldwin that he was here, and then Dad would be in trouble, and they didn't want Dad to be in trouble, did they? No, they didn't.

So Jake shrugged and announced that he could play with his fixed Chuggin' Charlie any old time, and that they should do something together that Dad could do, too. So Elizabeth pulled out the race car set that she had been saving for one of Jake's Christmas gifts and made peanut butter crackers and cocoa for both of her men while Jake and Jason set it up right in the living room. They played with that until dinner, then both Morgan men eagerly wolfed down the steak and potatoes – Jason's favorite – that she fixed for dinner. Jake had to wait on the wolfing part until his father cut his meat into little pieces for him, though.

And after that it was story time. Jason rekindled the fire in the fireplace and, grabbing his son and a throw blanket, read all of the books that Jake pulled from his massive bookshelf. He read about the adventures of Chuggin' Charlie, he read about Arthur's new baby sister, he read about the hungry caterpillar, he read about Captain Murderer and his cannibalistic fetishes (the most misguided children's book every written; Charles Dickens and Nikolas Cassidine deserved to be shot for that, one for writing the book and the other for giving it to Elizabeth for Jake as a joke) and he read about Grover's ice cream shop with one flavor for each letter of the alphabet.

And then Jake ran upstairs and got the worn red leather bound book that his late Grampa Alan read to the children at General Hospital and insisted that Jason read it aloud because they didn't know if he was even going to be home for Christmas that year. Swallowing past the lump in his throat, Jason had moved them to the couch and, with Elizabeth's arms wrapped securely around his broad shoulders, he proceeded to tell his son the story of baby Jesus and the first Christmas.

They had tucked Jake into bed together, promising to wake him up before Dad left. And then Jason had taken his wife by the hand to the bedroom they had shared before he had to leave town and proceeded to slowly, reverently make love to her as he'd fantasized about the past three months. Elizabeth reveled in every touch, every whispered word, every last feeling, memorizing it and locking it away into a corner of heart to call upon during his next long, almost unbearable absence. There was only one thing that kept her going while Jason was away without any word, any contact, any information letting her know that he was still safe, and that was her son.

And after that night, almost three weeks later to the exact day, her second reason would be their second child, conceived during a few stolen hours of his whispered nonsense and her quiet tears.

Jake wasn't too happy at being woken up from a sound sleep at three in the morning, but sprang to life once he realized just why he was being gently shaken. Still dressed in his Chuggin' Charlie pajamas, Jake clung to his father as he carried him all the way down the stairs, all the way to the back door that led out into his mother's carefully maintained garden. A car flashed its lights once for the briefest of moments, signaling its location and the time to leave, and that was when the little boy's tears started.

He cried while his father kissed his tawny hair, he cried while Jason promised that he would be home as soon as he possibly could, and he cried while his father reluctantly placed him in his mother's arms. Jake wouldn't look at him when Jason kissed Elizabeth goodbye, and buried his face in his mother's neck.

And so Elizabeth stood at her back door, holding her little boy close, watching her husband creep out down the little brick walkway he'd lain with his own two hands for her, and climbed into the black SUV Ritchie had parked in the trees at the edge of the forest preserve behind their house.

She stood there a long moment after the car had disappeared, half expecting a rapping at the door before the police broke in and arrested her for harboring a wanted man. This was what she had known to expect when she took Jason's ring and entered his life, and she had known that this was what their children would face as well.

"Don't you worry, baby," she murmured, adjusting her hold on Jake as she finally closed the door. "Daddy's done this before, and he knows how to stay safe. He'll be back before we know it."

And those were the things she'd long since learned to tell herself when she wasn't quite sure anymore what was heading their way.


End file.
